1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for wireless communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communications in the form of cellular phones and their supporting communications network have led to changes in the ways that people, particularly the young, meet, socialize and communicate.
For example, US2002/0007396 discloses a technique for chatting using a plurality of mobile terminals connected to a server device through a network. The server device generates a plurality of chat rooms divided based on a geographical standard related to the current position of each user; selects a chat room in which a user at a terminal is to participate, based on information relating to the current position of the terminal posted from each terminal; and mixes voices of users transmitted via terminals of respective users who participate in the same chat room selected at the step of selecting a chat room.
FriendZone service, developed by Valis LTD, Israel, allows user of cellular phones to establish communications with other cellular phone users by the mediation of a server device. The service allows the users to create buddy lists by adding friend, based on their approval, using phone numbers as identifier, to view their buddies' virtual presence, send them textual messages and view their location. Moreover, the service allows users to anonymously exchange textual messages in virtual chat room, to define their personal profile, to define a preferred matching profile, to perform an automatic match of two users, based on their profiles and their location. Further, the service allows users to send anonymous SMS (Short Message Service) to other users, without knowing their phone numbers.
Techniques enabling interactions among cellular phone users which make use of the so-called Bluetooth™ wireless technology are also known in the art.
Bluetooth is a standard and an industrial specification developed by a group of electronics manufacturers that allows any sort of electronic equipment, from computers and cell phones to keyboards and headphones, to connect and exchange information via wireless, short range (from 10 to 100 meters) radio frequency connections. Wireless communications among cellular phone users which make use of the Bluetooth™ technology allow free messages to be exchanged among the users. Moreover, they may be implemented by using relatively low power consumption and low cost transceiver in the user cellular phone.
Nathan Eagle and Alex Pentland (Research Work “Social Serendipity: Proximity Sensing and Cueing”, MIT Media Laboratory Technical Note 580, May 2004) disclose a system that allows proximate people to be detected and identified by using the Bluetooth wireless technology and to be matched from a database of user profiles. Bluetooth enabled cellular phones continuously transmit via Bluetooth standard a unique identification code (BTID) that can be received by other Bluetooth cellular phones. Every time a cellular phone discovers a new device by the Bluetooth discovery function that was not previously detected such information is recorded in a proximity log and sent to a central server utilizing a mobile network connection. The server maintains a database containing users' profiles, and a similarity score is calculated on the basis of the user profiles and preferences. If the score is above the thresholds set by both users, the server alerts the users that there is someone in their proximity (according to the Bluetooth discovery indications) whom might be of interest.
Moreover, BEDD™ service, by BEDD Corporation, allows cellular phone users to communicate and interact with each other by using Bluetooth wireless technology. The users have to fill-in a short profile describing who they are and who they would like to meet. The BEDD system, while running in the background of the cellular phones, automatically exchanges user profiles, as well as advertisements about things they would like to buy or sell, with others that come within the Bluetooth range of distances. Then, it alerts a user when others within the Bluetooth range are found which match with the user specific personalized criteria and enables free chats and instant messaging via Bluetooth wireless technology, within the Bluetooth range, or conventional mobile contacts via SMS, MMS, Call or E-mail.